They don’t even get to Rimmerworld until the end!

[Warbodog]

Thus goes the stock critique of Rimmerworld that I’ve read from over one person now. It’s the episode with the teleporter gag where nothing else of note happens and they don’t even get to Rimmerworld until the end!

Firstly, that isn’t true. Rimmerworld is actually quite good. Secondly, even if the last bit about the title is true – so what? Is Rimmerworld even especially noteworthy in that regard?

It stands out in the otherwise fast-paced Series VI, but thinking back to the early years, some of those episodes took their sweet time to get going, often preferring to faff around with things like gags and character-building scenes that (as we’ve noted) contribute absolutely nothing to the plot. And only after Holly had introduced everyone every week. How long did those episodes take to get on with it?

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So, here’s an objective breakdown of which Red Dwarf episodes take the longest time to address their titles. Rather than more conveniently counting from the start of the episodes, these are the spans between the episode title appearing on screen and it being referenced or somehow represented in the story.

(More astute fans may already be anticipating some anomalies that I hadn’t when deciding to do this, evident from the onset).

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The End (29:04)

Only joking. Rather than taking the title overly literally, it should probably be discounted for being too abstract to pin down specifically. This didn’t turn out to be a widespread issue with Red Dwarf episode titles, with only one other posing a similar problem. Perhaps you can work out which?

Future Echoes (11:40)

Lister’s reflection doesn’t match.

Balance of Power (1:38)

Lister and Rimmer argue about rank and power from the first scene (after Holly’s introductions).

Waiting for God (23:25)

Lister’s reluctant divinity is mentioned throughout, but the title manifests more literally in the penultimate scene.

Confidence and Paranoia (10:50)

Lister mentions the concept a full five minutes before they’re personified.

Me² (3:56)

You can debate what the title actually means, but a second Rimmer walks in during the opening scene, greatly benefiting from the previous episode’s cliffhanger kicking things off.

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Kryten (1:01)

Kryten appears early on, after Holly’s introduced everyone else.

Better Than Life (3:57)

Rimmer spots the game in the mail pile surprisingly early in the episode, then wastes loads of time moping around before it comes back into play 10 minutes later.

Thanks for the Memory (14:43)

They lose their memories earlier, but the gravestone is the tangible manifestation of the title.

Stasis Leak (3:46)

Present Rimmer says the thing to past Rimmer.

Queeg (6:55)

Charles Augins stares ominously out of a screen.

Parallel Universe (-∞?)

Holly announces where they are at 8:44 into the episode, but since the episode has no title card, I don’t know what to make of it and the system’s broken now. Let’s carry on though.

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Backwards (4:42)

There are visible signs of backwards motion as soon as they arrive, unless you’re a member of the Smart Party.

Marooned (6:42)

Starbug crashes on the ice world.

Polymorph (-0:41)

That’s right. Thanks to a dramatic title delay, the namesake monster is described and eventually seen before the title even appears!

Bodyswap (2:38)

Kryten calls it a mind swap, but you know what he means.

Timeslides (5:27)

Kryten explains that he’s developed some slides.

The Last Day (2:32)

Jim Reaper decrees that Kryten has 24 hours to live. Who else only just really understood that pun?

[smegadrive /frame/1108561/KFAuUy4gV2hhdCdzIGdvaW5nIG9uIHdpdGggdGhpcyBmcmFtZT8p/22/normal/bottom/2]

Camille (7:19)

A mechanoid hand enters view.

D.N.A. (5:18)

Lister’s gene sample is accepted and cloned. Kryten mentioned mutation earlier, but it wasn’t specific enough.

Justice (8:27)

This threatened to be a more thematic one, but the appearance of the model subsequently identified as Justice World renders it handily literal.

White Hole (15:56)

Kryten and Rimmer explode, subsequently blamed on the eponymous phenomenon.

Dimension Jump (3:38)

Bongo mentions the theory. If that’s another pun name, I don’t get it.

Meltdown (22:58)

Rimmer announces his final solution. I’d accept the dual interpretation of Rimmer’s descent into madness (“Descent?”) if the wax droids didn’t literally melt down at the end.

Holoship (3:37)

The Enlightenment appears.

[smegadrive /frame/669810/-/26/normal/bottom/2]

The Inquisitor (0:06)

The Inquisitor appears.

Terrorform (7:22)

Kryten pieces the pun together with his description of the Psy-moon and Rimmer’s fearful response.

Quarantine (12:32)

Lister says the thing.

Demons & Angels (13:06)

Lister doesn’t describe the low strawberry in demonic terms. That has to wait until the reveal of his bad self.

Back to Reality (6:50)

The Leisure World International announcer says the thing.

Psirens (10:53)

Rimmer deciphers gore.

Legion (8:35)

We don’t know if the wispy apparition is a true fusion, so this is taken from his humanoid appearance about a second later.

Gunmen of the Apocalypse (13:15)

Jimmy announces the arrival of the Apocalypse Boys.

Emohawk: Polymorph II (11:33)

Ainsley’s pet is glimpsed before it’s properly introduced.

[smegadrive /frame/847482/-/26/normal/bottom/2]

Rimmerworld (17:36)

Rimmer’s pod makes planetfall with just over a third of the episode’s runtime remaining. Outrageous.

Out of Time (12:23)

Time travel is mentioned.

Tikka to Ride (0:17)

A pre-titles scene presented the opportunity for a minus score and they blew it! The title’s about curry, which Kryten mentions in the first post-title scene.

Stoke Me a Clipper (22:28)

There’s a very long build-up, but Rimmer doesn’t say the thing until right near the end. It looks even less bad than it is because the title card doesn’t show up until five minutes into the episode.

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Ouroboros (-1:12)

Written on and read off a box before the delayed episode title and long before any stuff about batteries.

Duct Soup (12:26)

No one has any soup, but they sure crawl around a lot of ducts.

Blue (0:03)

I wish this was about Cat’s jacket, but if we have to start reading emotions, Lister’s visibly downbeat from the opening scene, ostensibly about Kochanski leaving.

Beyond a Joke (22:00)

Kryten says the thing.

Epideme (11:02)

Kryten identifies the virus.

Nanarchy (11:29)

Nanobots are referenced.

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Back in the Red (-0:09)

How literal do you want it? They’re back in Red Dwarf before the title can tell you.

Cassandra (8:25)

Kochanski mentions the mainframe shortly before she appears.

Krytie TV (11:41)

Kryten says the thing.

Pete (22:45)

The bird this episode is apparently about eventually shows up.

Only the Good… (27:10)

Rimmer says the thing right at the end of the episode. Still, at least it made it in at all, which is more than some manage. For instance…

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Back to Earth (25:19)

Treating the episodes as broadcast, the title has absolutely no relevance to Part 1 of the trilogy, with the guys only appearing to arrive back on Earth a couple of minutes after the title for Part 2. I can’t say this escaped my attention before.

Trojan (06:32)

Kryten says the thing.

Fathers & Suns (23:31)

There was some debate recently about how literally to take this title for an episode featuring only one father and one sun, respectively. The latter of those is introduced pretty late on.

Lemons (06:57)

Rimmer says the thing.

Entangled (04:18)

Cat and Kryten start saying the same things.

Dear Dave (16:40)

Rimmer reads out the thing.

The Beginning (N/A)

This episode title only seems to make sense as a reference back to the end of The End, so it’s similarly discounted for misbehaving.

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Twentica (08:51)

No one says the thing, which doesn’t really make sense outside of Doug Naylor’s mind, but they enter a version of 1920s America after some less-descript terrain.

Samsara (4:56)

Barker says the thing.

Give & Take (12:24)

Kidneys have been stolen and Kryten discusses Lister’s donor option.

Officer Rimmer (6:59)

Captain Herring says the thing.

Krysis (4:36)

Lister spells out the pun.

Can of Worms (4:36)

Lister says the thing.

Cured (5:62)

Rimmer reads out the thing.

Siliconia (7:10)

Wind says the thing.

Timewave (2:27)

Kryten says the thing.

Mechocracy (14:12)

Rimmer announces he’s running for machine president.

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M-Corp (5:41)

The M-Corp logo appears.

Skipper (11:14)

Kryten describes the quantum skipper without exactly saying the thing (then Lister says the thing).

The Promised Land (26:39)

Brother Sol says the thing.

So there you have it. By my reckoning, there are 10 episodes more at fault for this problem that several people associate with Rimmerworld. And praise is due to the preemptive four that manage to address the episode title even before it shows up, particularly Parallel Universe which is still going backwards in time forever or something.

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Topic

[Warbodog]

I realised towards the end of doing this that people might be talking about the ‘planet-of-Rimmers’ bit of Rimmerworld coming too late in the episode when they say that. Fair enough, it is a bit rushed. I’m not one to quibble over semantics.

[Jonsmad]

Yeah.   

That’s such an utterly truly exhaustive microscopic magnifying glass approach of an anal dissection of red dwarf trivia born out in full concept carried through to the nth degree that it really should be promoted to main page guest article. Seeing it sitting here in the forum like this is an insult to people like me who will not only read it in full, and disagree in some minor way before pointing out something like “Hey you missed out Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg”, but will end up throwing a half toasted croissant at you demanding you analyse Back In The Red/Back To Earth episodically.

Well done. I enjoyed it. I have a job and I’m semi not doing it so I can read this.   

[Warbodog]

I got stuck in saying-the-title mode near the end, when some of those concepts are already in play by that point (like them already being on the Trojan when Kryten names it), and the Camille plot probably starts when Kryten picks up her distress signal, but that’s the risk with publishing non-peer-reviewed research.

[Flap Jack]

Good stuff, Warbodog. Probably too good for the forum, honestly.

I do disagree with some of your reasoning. I think that for the episode titles which are less direct / more symbolic it makes sense not to take them totally literally. If we’re going to counter the Rimmerworld sceptics in good faith, we can give the titles some benefit of the doubt in the “the title is what the episode is about” stakes. These would be my alternates:

“Waiting for God” – When they start discussing the cat religion.

“Meltdown” – Either when they first get in the middle of the Waxworld conflict, or when they first realise that the people are wax droids.

“Stoke Me a Clipper” – Title is a reference to Ace, so when Ace first appears instead of when Rimmer says the thing.

“Beyond a Joke” – Title is ultimately about Kryten’s emotional/identity crisis, so either when he learns the secret of his creation (which is admittedly not that much earlier), or when his Negadrive first overloads.

“Fathers & Suns” – When Lister starts talking about his unique Father’s Day tradition at the beginning.

On the other side, I think you actually could take “The End” more literally (though maybe not quite “the actual end of the episode” literally). The end is when the initial set up of the show ends, when the crew is wiped out and plausibly so is the rest of humanity after the time skip. So this should be when Lister emerges from stasis.

“The Beginning” is a lot harder to pin down so you’re probably right to classify it as N/A, but you could make the argument that it’s when Rimmer learns of his true parentage, when his new (albeit short lived) outlook on life starts to ferment?

Though the thing about The Beginning is, regardless of when in the episode “the beginning” happens, the title card for it actually first appears 60 episodes earlier. Crunch those numbers!

[Warbodog]

Oh shit, Rimmerworld actually appears after 15:11.

[Warbodog]

Good points, Flap Jack, some of which occurred and were deliberately (inconsistently?) ignored. With the ampersand ones, I decided that both sides needed to be addressed before it could count, and it’s sun with a u, innit.

[Warbodog]

Somehow missed that Samsara belongs in the negative time club, congrats.

[Flap Jack]

I feel strongly that the crux of the “X doesn’t even happen until 25 minutes into an episode called X!” argument is that NONE of the title reflects the episode’s story for a majority of the runtime. If a title lists multiple things, I think even the most discerning or nitpicky viewers accept that it’s fine for those things to happen in series rather than parallel. If Rimmerworld had instead been called “Chinese Worry Balls & Rimmerworld” then I doubt they’d be making the same title criticism (probably some other ones though), but your methodology is premised on the idea that they would.

[Warbodog]

Yes, you’re right.

[Nick R]

I admire your dedication to breaking down this pointless trivia!

This is another reason that the Pete two-parter should have been called “Captain’s Office” (the first scene is Lister and Rimmer walking to said location) and “Pete” (the first scene after the recap and titles is about the dinosaur). Or, better yet, both parts should have been given other, more imaginative names. (Or, better yet, both parts should have been scrapped entirely.)

But having said that… I think when deciding on a title for an episode, how early or late the thing it refers to turns up doesn’t really matter much. If the titular thing only turns up near the end, but it’s very important and prominent, that’s a fair enough reason to give it that name. But the most important consideration is how distinctive/memorable/funny the name is.

The distinctiveness criteria became an issue with series XII, with the three titles “Siliconia”, “Mechocracy” and “M-Corp” all kind of overlapping – I remember pre-release (I think when the XI steelbook leaked the titles), people weren’t sure which title was The One Where Everyone Was Kryten.

[sleepey]

As much as I like to complain about the Dave era lobbing series 1 DVDs into the audience instead of making them laugh I do think “The Beginning” refers to it being Rimmer’s origin story, at only a slight stretch

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Fathers & Suns (23:31)
There was some debate recently about how literally to take this title for an episode featuring only one father and one sun, respectively.

Oh, don’t you start. They have this discussion in the Doctor Who community around Pyramids of Mars lying about how many conic polyhedrons are actually present on the surface of Sol 4 (i.e. not enough to be referred to in plural).

[Jonsmad]

Fathers & Suns (23:31)
There was some debate recently about how literally to take this title for an episode featuring only one father and one sun, respectively.

Oh, don’t you start. They have this discussion in the Doctor Who community around Pyramids of Mars lying about how many conic polyhedrons are actually present on the surface of Sol 4 (i.e. not enough to be referred to in plural).

They’ve got a points ;-)

[clem]

Nice work. 

And praise is due to the preemptive four that manage to address the episode title even before it shows up, particularly Parallel Universe which is still going backwards in time forever or something.

Parallel Universe had its title added on screen for the VHS release, so you could use that version. I’m pretty sure it was right at the beginning anyway, on the brief shot of the ship before it cuts to the Tongue Tied sequence.

[Warbodog]

If the titular thing only turns up near the end, but it’s very important and prominent, that’s a fair enough reason to give it that name.

Yeah, this isn’t even really what the two people who made similar comments about Rimmerworld in 2019 and 2025 were saying anyway, despite it being how I twisted the premise, which is probably more an extension of the forum joke about episodes “wasting” time on random funny scenes before the plot. I’m not totally sure what I got caught up in.

[Rushy]

My only criticism of Rimmerworld is that I wanted more of Rimmer on his own, surviving. The “log entry” sequence is one of my favourites in Series VI

[Warbodog]

The “log entry” sequence is one of my favourites in Series VI

I’d even say “what the hell, I just wouldn’t tell her” is the funniest line, over “or we could use the teleporter.”

[Spaceworm Jim]

I do like Rimmer’s ‘what the hell line’ but I prefer ‘use the teleporter’ from Kryten because it’s less creepy.

Episode titles that reflect an episode’s philosophy or sums up the conundrum which makes it unique (e.g. Dog with Two Bones from Farscape) are my favourite kind of episode titles. I can’t think of any for Red Dwarf, though I don’t have a problem with the majority of them anyway.

When VIII was airing and Pete I came on with the synopsis of a basketball competition in the Radio Times, I was really confused and it wasn’t until Pete II that I realised why it was called that. Even when Pete appeared toward the end of the first part, I didn’t put it together that we’d just been introduced to the title character because I forgot what the episode was called.

I’ve never had a problem with the title of Rimmerworld (Rimmerworld).

I enjoyed your post, Warbodog!

[Warbodog]

Episode titles that reflect an episode’s philosophy or sums up the conundrum which makes it unique (e.g. Dog with Two Bones from Farscape)

[Dax101]

As much as I like to complain about the Dave era lobbing series 1 DVDs into the audience instead of making them laugh I do think “The Beginning” refers to it being Rimmer’s origin story, at only a slight stretch

Well yeah Doug said it was just done so it would go full circle with the first episode title “the end”. Doug not knowing if there would be anymore after X.

Does the Skipper element not start untill 11 minutes in? Feels longer as its basically a long sketch before we get to the oh yeah other universes thing.

[Warbodog]

Does the Skipper element not start untill 11 minutes in? Feels longer as its basically a long sketch before we get to the oh yeah other universes thing.

That’s not unique to the Dave era though. The future echoes in Future Echoes take a similar time and the white hole in White Hole takes longer to show up. Those episodes feel more cohesive than Skipper, but they’re still surprise elements that suddenly appear.

[Unrumble]

Obligatory flippant GIF aside, really enjoyed reading that. 

Thanks for the Memory (14:43)

They lose their memories earlier, but the gravestone is the tangible manifestation of the title.

Feel like the argument could be made for earlier, like you say, or later, when Lister is literally patching in the memory in the holo-suite. 

[Warbodog]

Feel like the argument could be made for earlier, like you say, or later, when Lister is literally patching in the memory in the holo-suite. 

I drafted most of them before actually going through and tediously/indulgently checking for time stamps and thought the hologram suite would be the first instance, forgetting how the episode works. I also forgot that Kryten, Inquisitor and some other things were previewed before interacting with the characters later.

[Ben Saunders]

but they’re still surprise elements that suddenly appear.

It’s not the same, but saying this when it says WHITE HOLE at the beginning of the episode reminds me of when they do an “…of the Daleks” in Dr Who and the big surprise cliffhanger is… Daleks!!

[International Debris]

Now do one for Star Knot.

[Warbodog]

[Ben Saunders]

Now do one for Star Knot.

This is a bad pun on Astronaut, right? Did we ever figure that out?

[Moonlight]

[Technopeasant]

Kryten says the thing.

[Asclepius]

Kudos for the epic post and research, Warbodog!

[Technopeasant]

Kudos for the epic post and research, Warbodog!

[Author]

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